1EQQ8ZzGD

the US and never come across anybody who didn't speak his
language. of course this extended to cultural issues as well;
no need to understand how or when to bow or why to not eat
with one's left hand, if you literally never encountered anyone
who had different customs than you.
I believe this is all changing finally. Very nearly everyone
you know can talk to any person anywhere on the planet now.
(The cellphone statistic on Wikipedia is 80% of the world's
seven billion people.) Many of us can see pictures or video
taken by our friends, made just for us, on the other side of
the planet either minutes ago or even streaming live. A larger
and larger percentage of Americans know someone who is
from another country or someone now living outside the US.
our doughboys saw gay Paree, but now our soldiers are coming
home with a thorough familiarity with nations that their
fathers and mothers pretty much didn't know existed.
Will Americans seize the opportunity to learn about other
cultures via all our new technology? Yes and no. As everyone
in the world gets closer, we'll learn about the world but the
world will also learn about us. To some extent, it is inevitable
that virtually everyone on the grid will know at least one language
among Chinese, Hindi, or english, and frankly, I'm
betting on english as an almost universal language at some
point in the lifetimes of my grandchildren. It's not because the
US is imposing our language on anyone. We have an attractive
culture (which is very different from, if not the opposite
of, sophisticated culture). We have created a great deal of music
and film that is available in english all over the world. If
you want to consume those products, you'll end up learning
some english. What language will Americans need to learn?
Well, I'm glad we're offering our children a wider variety than
old standbys Spanish and French (though I'm sorry we don't
very often teach Latin, which gives you such a head start in
five languages plus english itself), and we certainly are making
strides, at least at better schools, with a broad range of offerings
that emphasize Mandarin but include Arabic at many
schools. (I don't hear much about Americans learning Hindi,
though.) Still, an American can live without knowing another
language, and that is the minimum test. An Italian or a Brazilian
will find it much harder to be part of world trade and
370